Absolute Swamp Thing by Alan Moore Vol. 1

I have to admit that DC was honest in the product description when they wrote, “brand-new coloring.” They question is, why?

My review was going to be all about my love for the 1984 Alan Moore run on Swamp Thing and how it was a perfect marriage between art and writing. I bought these comics when they were first released, and they made a profound impact on me in my teenage years. I wanted to talk about how Stephen Bissette and John Totleben were perhaps the first artists where, for me, their names became synonymous with the series they worked on. I was always disappointed when an issue was released without their art, but I understood given the detail of Bissette’s penciling and Totleben’s inking. Unfortunately, DC made one disastrous decision in this Absolute Edition.

I’m not one of those purists who thinks that every reprint should look exactly like the original. It makes sense that a more expensive version is going to have superior paper, printing techniques and modern tools so things are going to look different, and hopefully better. In fact, if the Absolute Edition looked like a scan of the original, I’d be complaining. The problem here is that DC looked at the colors supplied by Tatjana Wood and decided they could do better. Issue 30 opens with, “The returned man smiles” as the lips of a green skinned alien part. Wait, what? That’s supposed to be Matt Cable and in the original his skin is flesh colored. It was a great moment in the original comic but now it looks distractingly weird. It was as if DC decided that the comic was too gothic and gritty and decided to give it a more disco appearance.

Scarcely a page goes by without radical color shifts. Pages that have greens and blue are now purple and grey. The last panel of issue 25 shows an image of Goya’s ‘The Sleep of Reason’ in all red. Now, it’s shades of purple. Did that improve it? Nope. Page after page is altered and the worst thing is, these new colors are more often than not, softening Totleben’s inking. His inking was sharp and frightening and now it’s soft and friendly. The monkey king was original black and white but now has shades of grey. Is he more frightening? No. Sometimes colors are added such as giving Swamp Thing an orange tongue where it was originally green. Sometimes images have a single color where there used to be multiple colors and details are lost. I know that Alan Moore gets 98% of the credit for this run but it was a collaborative effort. Tatjana Wood isn’t even given coloring credit. She’s listed as the original comic colorist, but coloring credit goes to Steve Oliff and ‘Olyoptics’. Oliff is an award winning colorist and a veteran in the industry but radically changing the colors is akin to changing Alan Moore’s text. If the recoloring improved the visuals I would be forgiving but the changes are almost always either gratuitous or make the visuals worse. BTW: Even the covers are recolored and it is just as much of a disaster. Issue 21 has Swamp Thing menacing General Sunderland as light from a window illuminates the terrified man. In the recoloring, the light seems to fall across Swamp Thing but based on where the light is coming from it doesn’t make sense and the light hits his body flat as if he were two dimensional. My assumption is that this was just a coloring screw up. Nice job.

This was not the review I wanted to write. I wanted to talk about my love of Swamp Thing and how DC finally produced a high-quality compilation of one of their greatest comics ever. I often roll my eyes when reviewers nitpick details in reproductions as if they were just itching to complain. I’m sure Steve Oliff spent a lot of time on recoloring and it looks like volume 2 of Absolute Swamp Thing will be getting the same treatment. I just feel that when you have a series that comes this close to perfection that no one has a right to decide they can improve it and I would have to assume this was an editorial decision from DC.

The Absolute Edition has a very neat, soft, moss like cover and some really good extras including sketches and a long, well written article by Stephen Bissette. Bissette also wrote the introduction in book 6 of the TBD but the one in the Absolute Edition is brand new. Oh, and the cheapo TPB’s used the original coloring and look better. *sigh* Maybe if enough people complain, DC will reverse course or possibly even redo the first version of the Absolute Edition. Probably not. Still, it was nice revisiting these stories and as far as I know the stories are entirely unaltered.

Let's get the main talking point out of the way. This book is almost entirely recolored. There are pages that do not even closely resemble the original coloring on the artwork. Purists are not likely to like this book but if you're open to the changes, they are absolutely beautiful and well done. It would be one thing if the original trade paperbacks were not available but they are and for rather cheaply. Those that want the original gritty 1980s feel are better off getting the paperbacks. If you're into a high effort re-imagining of the original coloring, this book is going to absolutely blow you away. If you're open to regenesis (see what I did there), this is a must have.

This unique rendition of the Allan Moore run of Swamp Thing is a marvelous remastering of the content from the origiinal series. With enhanced colors and a larger format print, you are given an enhanced version of the classic run of Moore, Bissett and Totleben. The book comes in a deluxe slipcase worthy of the recognition of this incredible reworking of the character. The book when taken out of the slipcase has a mossy feel to it and has earthy like smell! It's beyond a reading experience, you feel like you're holding something genuinely organic! If you're familiar with the story and have read it prior, you'll wanna get your hands on this book. If you're new to Swamp Thing and want to read some of the best stories ever written for this character, then I highly suggest you purchase this book immediately!

Beautifully done omnibus. I wasn't sure about the recoloring idea but after thumbing through it it looks great! Really looking forward to rereading these stories.

Sigh... y'know, I'm always surprised at the dopey mistakes that the major comics publishers seem to repeatedly make, over and over and over... for the life of me, I will never understand the decision to slop today's gaudy, computer-obvious colors over classic material. Have neither DC nor Marvel learned anything from the disastrous results of allowing, say, Neal Adams recolor his classic stuff?? Is the nightmare that Dark Horse turned the great old BWS Conan comics into not remembered by the powers-that-be? Do the current decision makers have such little faith in this old material being able to find an audience that they HAVE to muck about with it??? The only thing I could think of is some over-zealous editor desperately trying to justify his job...

Regardless, the over-bearing, ugly color job on this book is absolutely deplorable... as so many of the reviewers here have stated, the new colors have literally nothing whatsoever to do with the previous/original colors. They're modern and they do not accentuate the strengths of the artwork. The new colors don't help the old comics, it just looks like some novice graphic artist went crazy with Illustrator and/or Photoshop... it's frighteningly amateurish, it's an embarrassing display of facility without any subtly... it's just an abject mess!!!

Although there are aficionados and fans out there who recognize what a dazzlingly stupid move this is by DC and their editors, it must be said that there is conversely a contingent of fans with no artistic standards that are hypnotized by describers such as "new" and "improved" that are bandied about when hyping such projects as this. And, predictably, they will rush out to spend money on it... thus insuring more bad decisions by the major publishers will be forthcoming. By contrast, just look at how the motion picture fandom reacted to Ted Turner colorizing all those old B&W MGM movies back in the 80s... they were up in arms and Turner looked like a fool!!! Absolutely no one who cares about classic movies ever gave any consideration to those abominations... it's too bad that comics fans aren't similarly concerned with the preservation and presentation of the works considered indispensable in the pantheon of great comics works... sigh, and so it goes...

Anyway, don't buy this. It's truly horrible. If only DC had an editor like Cory Sedlmeier at the helm of their reprint/classic division. Not to champion Marvel over DC, as they make a ton of poor decisions themselves, but their classic reprint books have been spot-on since Sedlmeier came on board. It's funny, because Drawn & Quarterly, considered a superior comics publisher, have recently erred on the other side of production, as their recent Little Lulu project started off on the wrong foot with cheaply scanned comics pages in with minimal reconstruction work done... the opposite side of the coin regarding this ST mistake. Too bad Sedlmeier can't be over ALL reprint projects of classic comics!!! Oh well, again, this book is a definite miss!!!

Its that simple.
5 star art and story with colors done by somebody trapped in a FILLMORE THEATER POSTERS MUSEUM FOR 1/2 THEIR LIFE!
Oliff doesn't seem to have read the story, because he completely undercuts it with his garish nonsensical "dig me" colors.
There are at least a dozen head scratching mistakes in just the first two issues. By mistake I mean ... he adds a translucent effect to things that are completely opaque. He actually forgot to color the fireballs flying up and mistook them for the swirl of the helicopter blades. He frequently ignores the color palette midway through a panel as if he has ADD!
He consistently competes with the line work using heavy saturated colors! The fine line work which should be on display with this larger format is actually completely invisible, compared to the original light one color backgrounds in the comic which show all the linework even with the crummy printing!!
He constantly changes background colors clothing colors and adds entire forests, clouds, weird fireballs, or blue snow that was never in the originals!

He messed this up very very badly.

Sad because this is a favorite of mine. Its like Lucas fiddling with thx 1138 and the original star wars, but worse. Imagine Luke in a blue outfit and leia in a red outfit and Han wearing a tan vest and Chewy is brown and green instead of brown and black. Doesn't sound that great right? I mean why change everyone's clothing color?
Its obvious when Liz or Abby wears red shes doing it as provocation, if you read the story there's even a sub narrative dialogue about a little girl in a red rain coat from the film Don't look back. But Oliff doesn't care, he just wants to color every little dang thing on the page! Even blank white papers on a desk now have some obscure color blob on then needlessly cluttering up the original arts compositions and obliterating its negative space!!

Will be keeping my original comic run. I'm selling this vol and cancelled my order for #2. I recommend you do the same before you get GEORGE LUCASAFIED. I can see why Moore doesn't want any part of DC the way they shamelessly recolor and reformat his work.
I will be adding a few comparison pics to discuss the major foul ups done by Oliff. And a few good choices that he made. Yes there are a few pages where the color was close enough to the original, or changed for the sake of clarity to be complimented.
I can go on and on in very specific detail regarding the hundreds, maybe thousands, of Oliff's poor choices so feel free to comment.

Alan Moore’s incredible Swamp Thing rum receives DC’s royal Absolute treatment. I love Steve Oliff’s recoloring. If you insist in Tatiana Wood’s also great, original palate, DON’T buy this and then bitch. Or better, DO buy the Absolute version and then get the done Saga of the Swamp Thing tpbs, with Woods’ original work.

Alan Moore planted a scientific seed to totally reimagine this character’s origin. And Steve Bissette and John Totleben sumptuously adorn Swamp Thing in an emerald cloak of fern and grass and glade and herb. There’s ample horror, appropriate environmentalism/anti-nuke, metaphysics and philosophy.

Like Frank Miller’s two Daredevil runs, Alan Moore’s Swamp Thing will never be overgrown. Moore’s masterpiece finally put the writer at the top of the comic book heap, brains before beauty, words over pictures.

I would have LOVED a Moore-Wrightson collaboration but ‘‘twas not to be...

It worth every penny, must have it, it’s a classic, re-colored looking great, slipcase and hardcover design is perfect, story and artwork beautiful, well done DC👍👍

Yes it just arrived! I Love this absolute edition. It's simply beautiful. Cannot wait till Vol 2.

This book is much bigger than I thought and very high quality cover and slip case. Very much worth the price.